veritaserum

[Dai Evans]

No: HPFGUIDX 11606

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "nykteris" <nykteris at p...> wrote:
> I was thinking about wizards' trials and I don't understand one 
thing. If they have veritaserum why don't they use it in court? It 
would be much easier to state whether somebody is a Death Eater or 
not. The same in Black's case in PoA. 

Oh good god. We had a big old discussion on exactly this over on PoU 
a while back, you may want to drift on over and have a search. The 
conclusions we came to (from what I remember) were that Veritaserum 
is probably not admissable in court because it is not 100% infallible 
(like the american Polygraph system), it would depend on how the 
witness percieved events as to what answers they gave and if they 
were confused for some reason, they could give a totally wrong answer 
while believing it to be correct. There were other factors involved 
like the violation of ones civil liberties etc., but the result is 
that there are too many problems with veritaserum for it to be used.



Dai